Logos-Bible-Software

For the moment, visitors to the Logos Academic Blog site are being invited to subscribe via email. Email subscription unlocks a coupon code for a free copy of Mark Bowald’s Rendering the Word in Theological Hermeneutics: Mapping Divine and Human Agency (Lexham, 2015). According to the book’s blurb,

What is the relationship between divine and human agency in the interpretation of Scripture? Differing schools of thought often fail to address this key question, overemphasizing or ignoring one or the other. When the divine inspiration of Scripture is overemphasized, the varied roles of human authors tend to become muted in our approach the text. Conversely, when we think of the Bible almost entirely in terms of its human authorship, Scripture’s character as the word of God tends to play little role in our theological reasoning. The tendency is to choose either an academic or a spiritual approach to interpretation.

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At Logos Bible Software, this month’s free book is John Frame’s Salvation Belongs to the Lord: An Introduction to Systematic Theology (P&R, 2006). According to the book’s blurb,

Beginning students of theology and church leaders looking for a theological refresher or teaching tool will welcome this remarkably clear introduction to the doctrines of Scripture. In an almost conversational style, Salvation Belongs to the Lord explores all the major biblical truths, explains key terms of systematic theology, and reflects on their implications and connections under the lordship of Christ.

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At theLAB, Rick Brannan has an interesting post about the most frequently cited verses in a selection of systematic theologies. Especially by comparison with the size of the two testaments, New Testament references vastly outnumber Old Testament references (90% to 10% in the top 100 most frequently cited texts). As a supplement to the analysis, it might also be interesting to see a bibliography of the exact systematic theologies involved in the accounting would be interesting, as well as whether there would be some way of calculating whether the sample size is large enough to be statistically significant (e.g., within the publication date ranges represented).

Under the heading of “keeping your Greek and Hebrew skills sharp,” Mark Ward has some helpful advice about creating a serial biblical text in Logos Bible Software. For instance, if you create a series between BHS and NA28 and you have BHS open, you can type a New Testament passage in the go box and run straight there. Logos will treat the two resources as combined.

I’d had this done at one point, but then a subsequent software update disrupted that connection, and I’d been looking for a good way to reestablish the connection. Using Mark’s principles, I’ve now got serial relationships established among BHS, LXX (based on the current German Bible Society version of Rahlfs), and NA28 texts. The combination allows movement from any one of the texts to any other. For texts occurring in more than one of the resources (BHS, LXX), it looks like Logos may follow the priority system established via the library.

The Baker Illustrated Bible Dictionary is a helpful resource with some useful enhancements in the Logos Bible Software version.

Over at the Logos Academic Blog, Tavis Bohlinger now has up the second part of his interview with Matthew Bates about his Salvation by Allegiance Alone: Rethinking Faith, Works, and the Gospel of Jesus the King (Baker, 2017).  This interview portion focuses much more on Bates’s particular proposal in the volume.

For previous related discussion, see Other discussion of Bates, “Salvation by allegiance,” Bates interview at theLAB, and Bates, “Salvation by allegiance alone” and some theological forebears.

I’ve previously mentioned Michael Graves’s Biblical Interpretation in the Early Church (Fortress, 2017).  The text is part of a projected 8-volume series. Logos Bible Software now has the first four volumes available for order via their pre-publication program. This includes

• Michael Graves, ed., Biblical Interpretation in the Early Church’
• Maria E. Doerfler and George Kalantzis, eds., Church and Empire
• Everett Ferguson and George Kalantzis, eds., Understandings of the Church
• Helen Rhee and George Kalantzis, eds., Wealth and Poverty in Early Christianity

For more information about the half-series bundle or to order, see the Logos website.

In commenting about theLAB’s interview with Matthew Bates, I overlooked having saved a couple other recent interactions with his Salvation by Allegiance Alone: Rethinking Faith, Works, and the Gospel of Jesus the King(Baker, 2017):

• Nijay Gupta provides a friendly, largely affirmative, and probing set of thoughts.
• Thomas Schreiner expresses his appreciation for some of the volume’s core impulses but suggests that the proposals gains fail to outweigh the corresponding deficiencies that it creates.

For additional, related discussion, see Bates interview at theLAB and Bates, “Salvation by allegiance alone” and some theological forebears.

At the Logos Academic Blog,  Tavis Bohlinger has the first part of an interview series with Matthew Bates. This first entry takes its main impetus from Bates’s Salvation by Allegiance Alone: Rethinking Faith, Works, and the Gospel of Jesus the King (Baker, 2017) but also ranges into other areas of personal background, research productivity, and spiritual formation.

For prior further discussion, see also Bates, “Salvation by allegiance alone” and some theological forebears.

Noteworthy freebies from Faithlife this month include:

• Bush, Beckham, and Due, Live in Liberty: The Spiritual Message of Galatians (Lexham, 2015)
• Chrysostom, Homilies on the Acts of the Apostles (Parker, 1851)
• à Kempis, De la imitación de Cristo [ The Imitation of Christ, Spanish translation] (Subirana, 1908)

On the Logos Talk blog, Mark Ward has a helpful post about techniques for having a “spring cleaning” in your Logos Bible Software library.

The “collections” tool is especially helpful for associating different resources that logically go together for a given purpose (e.g., multiple sets of Patristic texts, multiple grammars).

The “hide resources” feature can also be quite useful if a base package or collection upgrade was more cost effective but included some resources that weren’t useful. For instance, my library has several different BHS texts, but I’ve hidden some of the older or unmaintained versions so that the main one is always and only the one that appears when I go to open that text in my library.

Mark Ward helpfully describes the syntax of searching for particular highlighting styles in Logos Bible Software.

Recently, my Logos Bible Software homepage popped up this helpful video that explains searching with the “INTERSECT[S]” operator. I have largely missed the memo on this operator until now, but it is apparently a one-stop shop that will cover operations otherwise performed by “WITHIN”, “ANDEQUALS”, and “WITHIN 0 WORDS/CHARS”.

For April, Logos Bible Software’s “free book of the month” and discounted companion focus on Scripture in its cultural contexts.

The free text is Randolph Richards and Brandon O’Brien’s Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes: Removing Cultural Blinders to Better Understand the Bible (IVP, 2012). According to the book’s blub:

Brandon O’Brien and E. Randolph Richards shed light on the ways Western readers often misunderstand the cultural dynamics of the Bible. They identify nine key areas where modern Westerners have significantly different assumptions about what is going on in a text than what the context actually suggests. Drawing on their own cross-cultural experience in global missions, the authors show how greater understanding of cultural differences in language, time, and social mores allow us to see the Bible in fresh and unexpected ways.

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Software certainly can’t replace expertise when filtering through text-critical data. But it can provide some useful assistance in pulling that data together.

For an overview of some of the text-critical tools available in Logos Bible Software ( affiliate disclosure), check out the overview in this video for how to use the textual criticism section in the exegetical guide.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/LA7QH4wCn0s

Software that supports biblical and theological scholarship can be pricey, but Mark Hoffman has helpfully collected links to trial versions.

My Logos Bible Software homepage recently popped up this helpful overview of the “collections” feature.

March’s free and reduced-price companion volumes from Faithlife include:

Logos: Paula Gooder, This Risen Existence: The Spirit of Easter, and for $1.99, Dennis Ngien, Fruit for the Soul: Luther on the Lament Psalms Verbum: Bonaventure, The Life of Saint Francis, and for $0.99, Bonaventure, Mystical Opuscula

I haven’t yet found a dedicated Spanish “free book of the month” page, but the past several months have also had on offer a free Spanish resource. This month’s is, in translation, A. W. Pink’s Reflexiones paulinas: Estudios en las oraciones del Apóstol (vol. 1).

To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Logos Bible Software, Logos is giving users $25 of credit toward orders at Logos.com before 1 March. Originally, the offer had been limited to credit toward a select number of resources but has since been expanded to “any order on logos.com.”

Combined with academic pricing, the offer coupon code, and $0.34, I was able to load up on:

In a short interview published by the University of Notre Dame, James VanderKam urges caution about labeling the recent Dead Sea find as “Cave 12.” Comparisons have previously been drawn between the new find and Cave 8, which comes inside the numbering but contained no scrolls.

VanderKam comments,

In 1952, after the earliest scrolls finds, archaeologists made a survey of hundreds of caves and openings in the general vicinity of Khirbet Qumran…. Some 230 of them contained nothing of interest, but 26 housed pottery like that found in the first scrolls cave…. [G]iven the fact that other caves in the district, besides the 11 that held the Dead Sea Scrolls, contained pottery of the same sort as Qumran Cave 1, it seems a bit premature to call [the new find] Qumran Cave 12.

In a recent First Things essay, Peter Leithart shares a transparent and good-humored five-stage taxonomy for writing a non-fiction book. Although some elements are tongue-in-cheek, the normalcy of the kinds of feelings about the process as it progresses should be encouraging to those of us with much less writing under our belts.

HT: theLAB

Working under the auspices of Operation Scroll, archaeologists have discovered what is being numbered as the twelfth scroll cave in the vicinity of Khirbet Qumran.

Work in the new cave has produced no new texts, but both linen (characteristic of scroll wrappers found elsewhere) and blank parchment fragments suggest that texts probably were stored in the cave at some point. Since no [scroll-type] texts were found in this cave, as with cave 8, the new cave’s designation will likely be Q12 rather than 12Q. [Updated 15 February 2017. For explanation of this correction, please see Qumran Cave 12: Update 2.]

This month, Logos Bible Software’s free book is N. T. Wright’s Following Jesus: Biblical Reflections on Christian Discipleship (SPCK, 1994). The book falls into two parts:

Part one outlines the essential messages of six major New Testament books—Hebrews, Colossians, Matthew, John, Mark, and Revelation. Part two examines six key New Testament themes—resurrection, rebirth, temptation, hell, heaven, and new life—and considers their significance for the lives of present-day disciples.

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For December 2016, Logos Bible Software’s free book is Tremper Longman’s How to Read Proverbs (IVP, 2002). The accompanying volume for $1.99 is Longman’s How to Read the Psalms (IVP, 1988).

Source: Free Book of the Month - Logos Bible Software

This month, Logos Bible Software has Craig Keener’s New Covenant Commentary volume on Romans available for free. The companion deep-discount volume is Gordon Fee’s on Revelation, also from the NCC.

This month, Verbum has Joseph Fitzmyer’s Impact of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Paulist, 2009) available for free. The $0.99 companion volume is Fitzmyer’s Interpretation of Scripture: In Defense of the Historical-Critical Method (Paulist, 2008).

Verbum products will download, integrate, and run with Logos-branded engines and base packages also.

Noet has Maimonides’s Guide for the Perplexed free in the month of January. A taste of Maimonides’s ethical reflections is also available for $0.99.

Today, Logos Bible Software has Louis Berkhof’s Introduction to the New Testament for free.

Today’s Advent givaway by Logos Bible Software is Geerhardus Vos’s Idea of Biblical Theology as a Science and as a Theological Discipline.

For today’s Advent freebie, Logos Bible Software has volume 2, part 1 of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics ( The Doctrine of God).